He looked back at her as she removed her hand, looking embarrassed at having performed this intimate gesture. “In order to cover my back, I have to look in all directions at the same time,” he said.

She blinked, obviously trying to decipher this. “Meaning you can’t trust anyone?”

“Meaning there are things going on that no one can explain.” He paused. “Did you hear about Janet DiCarlo?”

“A vague story about something at her house.”

“I was there. It wasn’t vague. It was actually pretty straightforward on certain levels.”

“What the hell happened?”

Now Robie gripped her hand, hard. It was not an intimate gesture. “If I tell you, it can go no further. I’m not talking about professional courtesy. I’m talking about you staying alive.”

Vance’s mouth opened slightly and her eyes widened. “Okay, it goes no further.”

Robie took a sip of his drink and set the glass back down. “DiCarlo was attacked. Her guards were killed. She was wounded. I got her out. DHS took her for safekeeping.”

“Why couldn’t her own agency protect—” Vance stopped.

Robie nodded. “Exactly.”

“Are you talking rogue or systemic?”

“It’s not one traitor running around.”

“So systemic?”

“Could be.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m thinking about going off the grid.”

Vance sucked in a breath. “Are you sure about that?”

“You went off the grid for me.”

“I’m FBI, Robie. You going off the grid is a whole other thing.”

“I think it’s the only way I’m going to get to the truth.”

“Or get killed.”

“That could easily happen if I stay where I am.” He slowly raised his right arm. “It’s already nearly happened twice in the last few days.”

She glanced at Robie’s arm and then looked back at him. The strain was etched on her face. And that same level of strain was clear on Robie’s features.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“You’ve done plenty already.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“I may contact you at some point.”

“Robie, isn’t there any other way to handle this? You can come in to the FBI. We can protect you and maybe...” Her voice trailed off.

“I appreciate that. But I think my way is better.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got some leads to follow up on.”

“Can you even get off the grid with all this crap going on?”

“I can try. That’s all I can do.” He rose. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

“Why didyou want to meet? Not just to tell me you’re going off the grid?”

Robie started to say something but then couldn’t get it out.

She rose and stood next to him. Before he could move, Vance had put her arms around him and squeezed so tightly it was as though they had become one body. She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

She said, “You will come back. You will get through this. You’re Will Robie. Hell, you perform the impossible on a regular basis.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Robie turned and left.

Vance walked to the front of the restaurant and watched him head down the street until he disappeared into the darkness.

When she got back to her car she just sat there staring off and wondering if that was the last time she would ever see him.

CHAPTER

49

OFF THE GRID.

Robie was sitting in his apartment thinking about taking this step.

The last time he had gone off the grid it had not been pleasant. In fact, it had nearly cost him his life and the lives of several other people, including Julie and Vance.

Jessica Reel was off the grid right now. She seemed to be employing a complex strategy that had her on both sides of the chessboard at the same time. What advantage she hoped to gain by this was lost on Robie. It only meant that both sides had incentives to find and kill her.

Doubling your opposition made no sense. Yet Reel didn’t strike him as lacking in the brains department. So if she was doing it her strategy had to make sense somehow.

A former agency analyst in Arkansas turned militia nut. He’d written an apocalypse paper. She was there to find out whom he had sent it to.

Then there was a federal judge in Alexandria.

If Reel had been the one in Alexandria too, what the hell was the connection?

A judge, Gelder, Jacobs, and Roy West.

Were they all in on this apocalypse?

If so, exactly what was it?

If West had a copy of it, Robie had no way to get to it. The police would be crawling all over his place, or what was left of it. Reel probably had a copy, but again, he had no way to get it from her.

Robie stared down at the text Reel had sent him previously.

Everything I do has a reason. Just open the lock.

He suddenly groaned and slapped the table with his palm. How could he have been that stupid? Literally staring him right in the damn face.

He went to his safe, opened it, and pulled out the three items that had been left in her locker.

Right, her locker. All I had to do was open it.

Okay, now that the simple part was over, it got complicated really fast.

The gun.

The book.

The photo.

The gun he had already ripped apart and found nothing. It was just a pistol with some specialized parts that pointed him in no specific direction at all.

The book had no notes in it. No marginalia. Nothing to point him to a specific part.

The photo meant nothing to him. And he didn’t know who the man standing next to Reel was.

Everything I do has a reason.

He said in exasperation, “Great, lady, next time don’t make it so damn complicated. It’s adding up to something impossible for mere mortals to figure out.”

Robie locked the items back up and stared out the window.

What Blue Man had told him was only one more disquieting piece of information on top of many others. It seemed like the agency was imploding from the top level on down. How this state of chaos could be happening to the premier intelligence organization on earth was astounding.

The world was a truly dangerous place right now. It was far more dangerous even than during the Cold War. Back then the opponents were clearly delineated and aligned across the world. The stakes were just as clearly understood. The destruction of the world was a possibility. But not really. The theory of mutual assured destruction was a great catalyst for peace. You couldn’t take over the world if there was no world left to take over.

Today’s situation was far more fluid, far subtler, and the sides kept changing with alarming frequency. And Robie didn’t know if the element of mutual assured destruction was enough anymore. Apparently some people didn’t care if there was a world left afterward. That made them dangerous at an unprecedented level.

DiCarlo’s comments came back to him: Missions that never should have been. Missing personnel. Money moved from here to there and then it disappeared. Equipment sent to places it should not have been sent to and it also disappeared. And that’s not all. These things happened in discreet quantities over long periods of time. Taken singly they didn’t seem to be all that remarkable. But when one looks at them together.

To Robie’s mind, missing personnel alone should have been enough of a warning, much less everything else that DiCarlo had described.